Offering a free J.D. seems to be paying off for Irvine, Calif.’s fledgling law school. The number of applications coming in has about doubled in the last two weeks, to more than 1,000, said Victoria Ortiz, the director of admissions.
Elsewhere in California, some law schools are seeing more applications than they did at the same time last year, and some fewer. School officials are reluctant to tie those results just yet to the conventional wisdom that a bad economy sends people flocking to professional schools, though: They say the outlook can fluctuate even during an application season.
